Los Alamos Mountaineers Presenter s Guide Suggestions for a Successful Presentation Thank you for sharing your outdoor adventures with the Los Alamos Mountaineers and friends. We would like to share the following information to help make your presentation great. General Guidelines and Format Your presentation should fit within one hour. A narrative that relates personal stories, experiences and impressions will help engage our membership in relating to what happened to you, the speaker. Viewgraphs that emphasize images of your adventure over text are more effective at engaging our audience. Clear maps can help orient viewers to far away or lesstraveled places. The audience is curious and will want to ask you questions. Some questions will arise during your presentation to clarify information. Other questions will seek to expand on your presentation and may be more appropriate to address at the end of your talk. By deferring these questions, you maintain control of the clock. The Venue Fuller Lodge was built in 1928 as the Ranch School Dining Hall of the Los Alamos Ranch School. It also served as nurse, staff, and guest quarters. Named for Edward P. Fuller, a staff member at the Ranch School, it is made of 771 massive pine logs, personally selected by architect John Gaw Meem and Ranch School director A.J. Connell. After the Manhattan Project, wings were added so the building could serve as a hotel. Now a cultural center, the Lodge is used for social gatherings and meetings. A map to locate Fuller Lodge is at the end of this guide. The main meeting room is the Pajarito Room and seats approximately 75 people. The room and building are built almost entirely of wood and acoustics are typical of a large room of this age, size and construction. During the summer months, it is not possible to completely darken the room as some natural light will still be visible through the fabric window shades. Figure 1. The Pajarito Room of Fuller Lodge as typically set up for a presentation.
Projection Screen A Da Lite portable projection screen measuring 84 x 84 (118 diagonal) will be located at the front of the room. Surface color is matte white. The screen we use is much larger than the one pictured above. Projector The current (2015) projector used for meetings of the Los Alamos Mountaineers is an Epson Epson EX7220 with specifications given in Appendix A. Computer The LAM can provide a laptop computer for presentation use. The computer is a HP Pavilion dv6 running Windows 7 and includes a typical suite of presentation software including PowerPoint 2007, Adobe Reader XI and several photo viewers. Audio Wireless handheld and lapel microphones are available and several additional audio inputs to the amplifier are available for use. Two loudspeakers are located at the front of the room, to the sides of the projection screen. Fuller Lodge is equipped with a T-Coil hearing loop which helps persons who use hearing aids that are equipped with T-coils hear sounds from the PA system directly and clearly in the hearing aids. Presenters are asked to use one of the provided microphones if anyone in the audience is using the hearing loop. The LAM can provide a cable to connect your computer to the audio system. Video A standalone DVD player can be provided by the LAM. Please advise at least a week in advance of your presentation if you will need it. Laser pointer/remote control The LAM will provide a wireless (RF) remote control with integrated laser pointer to allow presenters to advance images when connected to a computer via a wired USB port. This device has not been successfully used with Apple hardware as a remote control. Slide projector A Kodak Ektagraphic slide projector with wired remote control and one empty slide carousel can be provided by the LAM. Presenters using slides are encouraged to bring their own pre-loaded carousel(s). Podium A podium and reading light is available for use by presenters. Please advise if you would like to use either a week prior to your presentation. WiFi There is no publically-accessible wireless internet connection available in Fuller Lodge. Please do not rely on a wireless connection to access files or to display online content during your presentation. The use of cellular modems has not been tested in Fuller Lodge, although cellular telephone users generally have good signals and service in the Lodge, depending on the coverage and bandwidth of their carrier.
Suggestions for a successful presentation The following suggestions are based on accepted practices for computer-based presentations and on the various successes and problems we have encountered at LAM presentations. Use your own computer In order for your presentation to run as smoothly as possible, we recommend that presenters use their own laptop/computer/device for their presentation. Bring your power supply, even if your battery is fully charged. A presenter once thought the battery on his laptop was charged and five minutes into the presentation, the computer shut down due to a low battery. He did not bring the power supply and did not have a backup copy of the presentation available. It was a short meeting. Presentation/file format The most common type of presentation used is one assembled in Microsoft PowerPoint. There are many online sources of guidance for enhancing PowerPoint presentations, but the vast majority of presenters simply use PowerPoint to display photographs of their adventures, with perhaps a few added slides of background information on locations, logistics, annotated maps and gear recommendations. Please keep in mind that the projection screen we use is larger than that typically found in smaller conference/meeting rooms and a few adjustments are recommended. Use very large font sizes, and nothing smaller than 24 point as this is about the smallest size that can be viewed clearly on a large screen. Sans serif (e.g. Arial, Helvetica, Calibri) and some artistic fonts (Papyrus, etc) project more clearly than fonts like Times Roman. Change font colors to make them stand out against any colored backgrounds. Avoid font effects like shadowing and font animations. Black backgrounds, for slides/images that do not fully occupy the available screen space, are less harsh to viewers eyes than white backgrounds. The file size of PowerPoint presentations can get large very quickly, particularly if many high resolution pictures are included. Be aware that the projector resolution is very often much lower than the resolution of the photos your camera takes, so the projected image will only be at the resolution of the projector. Decreasing the resolution of your pictures to something closer to what the projector can handle will keep file sizes more manageable. The final PowerPoint file size should be less than about 200 MB to load and run smoothly, although we have successfully loaded and displayed a few larger.ppt/.pptx files. Audio/video, included embedded and linked files Small embedded or linked audio and video files generally work well in PowerPoint, but we have encountered problems when a presentation with audio/video worked perfectly on a presenter s home computer but the embedded/linked files did not play properly when they brought a copy of their presentation to the meeting and used the LAM laptop. Each computer will have somewhat different audio and video codecs and supported file formats, so the LAM strongly encourages presenters who have embedded audio and/or video in their presentations to use their own laptop computer for their presentation to avoid problems. If a presenter has a long video (more than a few minutes), we encourage you to bring it on a DVD disc and request the standalone DVD player be made available for your presentation. Requests for BluRay/High Definition playback capability will need to be made at least a month prior to the date of your presentation, and accommodation of such requests is not guaranteed. Please have a backup plan.
Please advise us if you would like to play audio, either in your presentation or via a standalone device (ipod, CD player, etc). MAC/PC file issues PowerPoint files created on Apple hardware have sometimes been problematic when displayed on a PC/Windows laptop, particularly when specific fonts are part of the presentation. If you will be creating your presentation on an Apple product but using the LAM PC laptop for display, please test your presentation on a friend s Windows computer to troubleshoot problems. Folders of pictures If you have no need for added text or other presentation features of PowerPoint, displaying a folder of pictures works well. Picture files saved at the full resolution of high megapixel cameras may be slow to load, so please consider downsizing picture files to a resolution that is closer to the capabilities of the projector. Use standard picture file formats like.jpg or.tiff for example. Double-check the file naming and order of the pictures in your folder. We once had a speaker who quickly copied a whole folder of pictures from his computer to a USB drive and brought it to a LAM meeting only to find that he now had a folder of the same picture, copied dozens of times due to a file naming problem. We have also seen the order of pictures change during file copy operations. PDF files Portable document format (.pdf) files are another way to preserve fonts and display pictures and have been used successfully by several presenters. Bringing your presentation to the meeting If you will not be using your own computer, the preferred media is a USB drive, preferably one that is not shared among friends or family members to reduce the chance of a virus being copied to the LAM laptop. A CD or DVD of the presentation is an acceptable option. Please test your presentation on a computer different than the one it was created on before the day of the meeting if you will not be using your own computer. Apple hardware (and very new PC laptops) If you will be using any Apple product for your presentation, there a few considerations to be aware of. The projector has VGA (Figure 2) and HDMI (Figure 3) inputs, therefore your hardware must be able to connect to either a VGA or HDMI cable. Apple has used at least six different external display connectors on their laptops/devices recently and you must provide an adapter that has either a 15 pin VGA female or HDMI port. The only adapter the LAM can provide is DVI to VGA. Fig. 2: VGA cable (left) that plugs into your computer/adapter VGA port (right).
Fig. 3: HDMI cable (left) that plugs into your computer/adapter HDMI port (right). Some newer, including PC, laptops incorporate a DisplayPort connector. See the figure and note below. Fig. 4: DisplayPort cable (left) and DisplayPort socket (right). Be careful, as both look similar to an HDMI connector, but are not interchangeable. The LAM does NOT have a DisplayPort adapter. The most frequent problem we encounter when presenters use Apple hardware is getting the Apple operating system to recognize an external display/projector and then sizing the projected screen for optimal resolution. Please be familiar with these areas of operation of your Apple hardware/software to help ensure a smooth connection of your computer to the projector. There is limited time for testing/troubleshooting just prior to your presentation, so please bring a backup copy of your presentation on a USB drive if we encounter problems using your Apple computer with the projector. The LAM remote control (USB) does not always work with Apple computers. If you will be using Apple hardware for your presentation, consider bringing your own remote control. Special projector settings If you require specific projector settings (color temperature, gamma, etc), please advise at least a week in advance and plan to arrive at Fuller Lodge at least one half hour prior to the beginning of the LAM meeting to make adjustments. Questions/Special requests Please contact the LAM Program Chair for any general questions or the LAM A/V Coordinator for specific inquiries or requests related to your presentation. Current contact information can be found on the LAM website at lamountaineers.org
Appendix A Epson EX7220 Projector specifications Projection System: Epson 3LCD, 3-chip technology Projection Method: Front Driving Method: Epson Poly-silicon TFT Active Matrix Pixel Number: 1,024,000 dots (1280 x 800) x 3 Color Brightness (Color Light Output): 3000 lumens 1 White Brightness (White Light Output): 3000 lumens 1 Aspect Ratio: 16:10 Native Resolution: 1280 x 800 (WXGA) Resize: 640 x 480 (VGA), 1024 x 768 (XGA), 1152 x 864 (SXGA), 1440 x 900 (WSXGA), 1400 x 1050 (SXGA+) Lamp Type: 200 W UHE Throw Ratio Range: 1.30 1.56 Size (projected distance): 33" 318" (0.9 9.0 m) Keystone Correction: Automatic: Vertical: ±30 degrees Manual: Horizontal: ±30 degrees USB Plug 'n Play: Projects audio and video PC and Mac compatible Contrast Ratio: Up to 10,000:1 Color Reproduction: Up to 1.07 billion colors Color Processing: 10 bit Projection Lens Type: Manual zoom / Manual focus F-number: 1.58 1.72 Focal Length: 16.9 20.28 mm Zoom Ratio: 1.0 1.2
Other Display Performance: NTSC: 480 lines PAL: 560 line (Depends on observation of the multi-burst pattern) Input Signal: NTSC / NTSC4.43 / PAL / M-PAL / N-PAL / PAL60 / SECAM Interfaces: HDMI x 1 Computer / Component video: D-sub 15 pin x 1 S-video: Mini DIN x 1 Composite video: RCA (Yellow) x 1 Audio in: RCA x 1 (White / Red) USB connector: Type A x 1 (Wi-Fi, PC-free USB and DC-06 Document Camera) USB connector: Type B x 1 (USB Plug 'n Play) Speaker: 2 W monaural Remote Control Features: Source search selection, power, volume, e-zoom, A/V mute, freeze, menu, page up and down, help, auto, mouse functions Operating Angle: Right / Left: ±30 degrees Upper / Lower: ±15 degrees Operating Distance: 19 ft (6 m) Notes 1 Color brightness (color light output) and white brightness (white light output) will vary depending on usage conditions. Color light output measured in accordance with IDMS 15.4; white light output measured in accordance with ISO 21118. Epson projectors have 3x Brighter Colors than their leading competitive 1-chip DLP business and education projectors. Competitive projectors based on NPD data, July 2011 through June 2012. Color brightness (color light output) measured in accordance with IDMS 15.4. Color brightness will vary depending on usage conditions.
Appendix B: Address, Coordinates and Map to Fuller Lodge Fuller Lodge 2132 Central Ave. Los Alamos, NM 87544 Coordinates: 35 52.925' N 106 18.135 W LAM Presenters Guide, Version 1.1, April 2015